Video surveillance systems and methods are being deployed and networked throughout various geographical regions. For example, mobile digital video recorder (MDVR) in the public safety context (e.g., police, fire, medical, etc.) can be located on a vehicle dashboard, on public safety personnel or the like, fixed on a pole for example, and the like. As can be expected with the proliferation of video surveillance systems and methods, significant amounts of video are being recorded and captured making it increasing important to index recorded video to make it searchable by features. Further, it would be helpful to pre-filter the video prior to upload and/or saving/storing. In a MDVR used in a public safety role, there is often an incident report that is in effect for periods of time during which video is being captured. Computer Assisted Dispatch (CAD) (also referred to as Computer Aided Dispatch) systems and methods can be used to generate the incident reports. Typically a dispatcher announces relevant call details to the field personnel who take action accordingly. Conventionally, there is no real-time integration of CAD incident reports and field-captured video.
Video analytics generally refers to processing and searching video such as to detect something contained therein on one or more frames of captured video. Conventionally, video analytics is difficult due to all of the possible permutations of objects, people, etc. that could be contained in each video frame. Specifically, all items that can be in video frames in the context of video analytics can be contained in a so-called dictionary. That said, processing is complex and time-consuming with conventional dictionaries being extremely large.
Accordingly, with the vast proliferation of video captured in the field, there is a need for video tagging and searching systems and methods to assist in retrieval, storage, and/or analytics.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.